Friday, June 17, 2011

Uchi vagundheduthu


It’s a hot summer afternoon. The earth has nearly forgotten the touch of the rain. The oppressive heat is hangs heavily over the skies. The only ones braving the heat are the cricket-crazy kids. They come around to ask you to join them or ask for ‘subs’ which is short for subscriptions to help your team buy a proper ball. It never comes to fruition. The sago pappads are drying in the sun, and drying faster than usual near the entrance on a wooden bench covered with a cloth. It’s summer holidays now and some of your friends have gone to a hotter city for the hols. The working people in your house come home for lunch. It’s a quiet time, you hear vessels being moved about, the aroma of food you had in the morning fills the air again. Few words are exchanged over lunch. Heat drains you. You don’t feel the heat much as you haven’t stepped out yet, and the floor feels cool as you lie down and browse a weekly magazine. Someone switches on the radio, and this song comes on, and there’s something scorching about the song too just like the day outside.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Naan Yaaru


It’s a night song. You hear it after everyone has gone to sleep. Because that’s how you heard it the first time. It was at your friend’s place where all songs made their debut. The evening’s revelries which began with the single malt you got for your friends back home from the duty free swiftly blended with the local variety. You went to late night food stalls run from street corners and had nostalgia in small plates. When you went back to the house, they played a lot of the latest songs you missed. Still some more of the golden liquid is left, which you down with the help of some gold flakes. It’s way past bed time in most parts of the world, and you go to the living room and see mattresses laid out like they used to be when you were doing ‘group study’ during college days. Some have already gone to sleep. The old fan is set a slower speed to prevent it making too much noise and this song comes on as you lie down for the night (or is it 3 am?). Quiet, soft strains of the flute. A single stringed instrument joins at some point. A mesmerizing rhythm. A perfect lullaby.

Ninaovo oru paravai


It’s another one of those ‘A’ movies you were not allowed to go to but the songs fortunately had no age restrictions. This one got a lot of airtime. Sometimes in the morning before you went to school and sometimes in the evening. Or Sunday mornings when the station played the latest songs. It’s not so much where you heard this one as it is about where it takes you. The second inter draws you in with a river of violins to a scene you always imagined was a lake with two people rowing a boat. Somehow that was the picture you associate with this song. And when you watched the movie much later, years later, you saw a lake with two people rowing a boat during the second inter. Then you realise, that’s the power of seven notes, the right hands.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Vadatha Rosapoo


It’s a hottish afternoon. The kind of afternoon you don’t want to be out, like during summer annual exam time when you have the afternoon shift. You are neither sleepy nor awake, it’s an indifferent time. Somehow you drag yourself out of your home, walk to the school. There’s a sense of stupor on the streets but for the few students who coming back from their morning session. You see more of your classmates near the school, it looks a bit busier there. You walk with your friend to the stationery shop, past the closed temple and watch as other students buy paper, pencil and erasers. Even the shop is empty but for the students. The push cart man selling coloured water and ice shavings with worm like things is trying to drum up business. The old lady selling mangoes, which are attracting flies sits watching the thin crowd. This song comes on a radio from one of the shops. Lazy, slow beat. Perfectly blends with the way you feel.